


Ohana

by Olcanarmo



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:29:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23740843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Olcanarmo/pseuds/Olcanarmo
Summary: This is my happier, alternative, version of what happened after Journey’s End, for anyone else who wanted better endings for Donna and Rose.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor & Rose Tyler, Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Rose Tyler
Comments: 9
Kudos: 26





	Ohana

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old fic, and needs an edit, but I’ve just spent a couple of hours crying over the rewatch so I’m just going to post it.

Donna dreamt that something was missing. She crawled through a burning room, more distressed by her sense of loss than by the heat of the flames, and reached out in search of it. Her flailing hand hit the alarm clock, and woke her up. 

_23:52,_ she thought, peering at the clock. _I can't take another seven hours of this._

She untangled herself from the sheets, shrugged into her fleecy dressing gown, and went in search of comfort. 

Wilf was downstairs in the kitchen, standing at the open back door. The smell of the rainy garden floated in around him. 

"You won't see any stars tonight, Grandad," Donna said, joining him. "Not with those clouds."

"Oh, hello sweetheart," he said. "I was hoping for just one star. It makes me feel better if I can spot one before I turn in."

"You should go to bed. No point in neither of us getting any sleep." She poked in the cupboard for the paracetamol and missed his worried glance. 

"You can't nod off?" he asked.

"Oh, I can nod off. Whether I want to our not." She filled a glass with water and gulped the tablets. "I've been having nightmares ever since that mad evening when I fell asleep and everyone was all _Ooo, we've been travelling through space!_ Honestly, just cos it got a bit dark during the daytime, it doesn't mean the Earth moved. It just means Wimbledon's on."

"Hah! You're right about that. Is that what you've been dreaming about, that the sun's gone?"

"No,” she said, slowly. “I keep dreaming that everything's on fire." She frowned a little as she tried to recapture the images. "That's it, though. That's all there is."

"What's on fire, sweetheart?" he prompted.

"I don't know. I don't even know where I’m supposed to be. There's just... fire." She snapped back to herself. "What, do you think there's something wrong with me?"

He smiled reassuringly. "No, nothing wrong with you, darling. You're perfect. Tell you what, I'll make us a mug of Horlicks, and then we'll get a good night's sleep, and you'll be all rested for tomorrow. Can't have the birthday girl going around with bags under her eyes."

Donna let herself be steered gently towards a chair and watched Wilf bustle around the kitchen. Her inner five-year-old wanted to believe that hot milk was the answer, but the dream’s sense of loss wouldn’t leave her. Something was still wrong. 

***

"But Rose, what're you going to do with him?"

Sometimes Jackie had a terrible habit of asking the very thing that Rose was trying to avoid thinking about. They were finally home from Norway and settling back into the house. A shower and a change of clothes had made everyone feel better, although away from the TARDIS' wardrobe and laundry the Doctor had been forced to borrow clothes from Pete. His wrists and ankles stuck out. Rose could see him through the living room doorway with Tony on his knee, which was not at all the happy family scene it should have been. She was trying not to let it irritate her. 

"Is he going to get a job?" Jackie was still whispering. "You can't go gallivanting around the galaxy without a TARDIS. Are you going to take him to work?"

"I dunno. I suppose so. At least at Torchwood I can tell them some of the truth. No-one else is likely to believe me."

"And where's he sleeping tonight?"

"Mum!" hissed Rose. She shot a glance at the Doctor, but he hadn't heard. "The spare room, alright?"

"Which one?"

"Any one! And we'll work out what he's going to do tomorrow. Just leave it for tonight."

***

"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…"

Alice came in carrying the cake. It looked like Donna's friends had been brutally accurate with the number of candles.

"… dear Doooonnaaaaaah! Happy birthday to yoooou!"

"Oh my god, look at it! Blow it out quick before the whole place goes up!"

"Make a wish!"

Donna bent over the cake and blew. The candles went out, but she could still see the flames, even when she straightened up. Her friends seemed to stare at her from beyond a wall of ghostly fire. She tried to smile at them, hoping that everything would be back to normal before she made a fool out of herself. They looked concerned, and mouthed urgent words that she couldn't hear. She blinked at them and passed out, and the flames followed her into unconsciousness.

This time when she dreamed, she could make out what was burning. She was in a huge room with twisty pillars stretching up to a distant ceiling. There was something that looked like a metal mushroom in the centre of the room and hexagons were exploding out of the walls. A scorching metal grill dug into her hands and knees as she crawled across it, reaching towards a glass jar.

She woke up in her own bed with her grandad holding her hand. 

"Hello," he said, blinking back tears. "Come back to us, have you?"

Donna tried to focus through her headache.

"What happened?" she asked. "Where's the party?"

"They went home. You went all peculiar and fell into the Pringles. I think you were having nightmares again."

"I was," said Donna. "I was dreaming that I was crawling. Honestly, it was so real I should have bruises on my knees. Or blisters, cos it was hot as well. And there was this hand in a jar - that's just disgusting. That's not me, Grandad. I don't dream about Frankenstein things. Where on Earth did that come from?"

The strangeness of the last few days finally overcame her and tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes.

“Oh, I know I’m not making any sense,” she said, scrubbing wearily at her cheeks. “Don’t mind me talking rubbish.” 

She tried to make out his expression in the dim light.

"What?" she asked. "What is it?"

"Nothing," he said. But he wasn't meeting her eyes.

***

"Rose!" exclaimed the Doctor. "There you are! Time for work, is it?"

He was wearing one of the new suits they had bought, which at least fitted him better than Pete's had, but some quirk of altered body language meant that he didn't wear it as well as the other Doctor would have. 

"Yeah," said Rose. "I phoned and they said it's fine. I told them you were Doctor Smith from a parallel world. HR at Torchwood probably have forms for that sort of thing. We'll check with my mum." 

"No! Your mum works for Torchwood?"

"How do you think she got to come after me with a great big gun? They don't normally let employee's mothers use the dimension cannon. But she's part time in HR, and everyone gets some basic military training since the Cyber War, and after that she just had to talk them into it. I don't want to know how she did it. She might have picked up the gun first."

The Doctor laughed, and she smiled at him.

_The Doctor,_ she thought. _But not my Doctor. A Doctor, I suppose. Me and a Doctor who loves me. That's good, right?_

_What am I supposed to do if I don't love him?_

***

Donna went to sleep again that evening and didn't wake up. This time she reached through the flames and took the hand of a tall, skinny man with a bright smile and dark eyes. 

"Doctor?" she asked.

"Donna Noble," he said. "You're brilliant. And you're remembering." 

He pressed a lever that shot her out of a volcano into a spaceship full of talking potatoes that were at war with a girl with a blonde ponytail. The girl back-flipped under a burnt orange sky and turned into Queen Victoria, who dissolved into lumps of fat. The largest lump waved at Donna and vomited up tentacles and said, "DoctorDonna, you must listen."

"Oh my god," she said. "You're an Ood. I remember the Ood."

She latched onto the memory and he came into focus. The sky overhead ran through the spectrum and settled on blue, and their surroundings became recognisable as the snowy landscape of the Ood Sphere.

"Ood Sigma?" asked Donna.

"No, I am the song of Ood Sigma. He sang, and you listened, and I remained in your memory. I am here to help you, my friend."

"I remember, but I don't remember which memories are mine. Wait! Have I met Queen Victoria?"

“The part of you that is Donna has not. But you are the DoctorDonna, two songs in one. The Doctor tried to make you forget, but you fought him too hard. I will help you find another way."

"What are you talking about? Help me how?"

"I will help you to hear your own song, and not the Doctor's. Listen." He spread his arms. "The wind and the ice and the snow still carry your names."

Donna listened. The wind whistled, whipping the snow around the crags. Other than that, there was nothing.

"What am I supposed…" she began, but the Ood raised a hand and she subsided.

_Fine,_ she thought, _I'll listen to the wind. And the ice, and the snow. This is going to get boring really fast. Wasn't there a rocket last time? And the Doctor was here, even if he did take the mick when I couldn't hear him under my hood._

_Oh, right._

She reached up and pushed back the fur-lined parka hood. She could hear faint music.

"That's nice," she told the Ood. "Bit like Classic FM. My dad used to have that on sometimes. Oh, hang on, I get it. Two tunes. Only they're so mixed up you can hardly tell. Is one of them me?"

The Ood gestured and one of the patterns of music grew louder. 

"Listen," he said. "You must hear only this song, or you will die. Concentrate. Be Donna."

"Die?!" Fear made Donna's voice shrill. "What do you mean die? I can't die! I'm not even awake." 

“No, you are not awake. You are dying in your sleep. Listen!”

They took Donna to the hospital. Sylvia went in with her, pale with worry and snapping at the nurses, but Wilf waited outside. The stars were coming out. He dug in his pocket for his mobile phone and wandered over to a hospital worker, who was smoking a cigarette just outside the entrance.

"Excuse me," he said. "My grandaughter's in the hospital and I need to call someone for her. I don't know the number, but I dialled it from this phone about a week ago. Do you think you could find it for me?"

The man took pity on him and took the phone. His thumbs sped over the buttons as he pulled up the number. 

"There you go, mate," he said, handing it back, "hope she gets better."

"Thank you," said Wilf, and went to find a quiet corner to make his call.

The phone sounded jarringly against the regular background noises of the TARDIS. The Doctor looked at it doubtfully, but gave in to curiosity and picked it up.

"Martha?" he asked.

"No, Doctor, it's Wilf."

"Wilf? What's wrong? Where did you get this number?"

"Rose gave it to us - to Sylvia and me. You've got to come back, sir. Donna's remembering. We didn't tell her; she's just been having dreams."

"Wilf, listen to me. Seeing me now would be the worst possible thing for her."

"She's not awake. She's in hospital. Please, Doctor."

"There's nothing I can do."

"I don't believe that. And even if there isn't, she'd want you here. Please, Doctor. Please."

There was a long silence. Then a quiet release of breath, too controlled to be a sigh. 

"Keep your phone on," he said. "The TARDIS can home in on it."

***

Rose jumped guiltily when she heard footsteps behind her, but it was only Major Cartwright, the head of her section.

"So, Rose, where's Doctor Smith? Settling in OK?" he enquired.

"Yes, sir. I left him having his medical."

"And you've come to check on the dimension cannon. I'm afraid that it's shut down as mysteriously as it came to life. Still, we know a lot more than we did. I think we're close to getting this up and running permanently." He studied her. "I suppose that it's a scientific exercise for you now, rather than a personal one. Doctor John Smith matches our description of the Doctor."

"He's human, sir."

"And thereby hangs a tale. I've got back to back meetings today, so I'll let you get sorted. Debriefing at 9am tomorrow, Ms Tyler." he paused. "Rose," he added, more gently, "shall we take you off Project Bad Wolf?"

"No, sir," said Rose, trying not to feel like she was cheating on someone. "I started the work on the dimension cannon. I'd like to see it finished."

"Right. I'll have the latest files emailed over to you. It's good to have you back."

***

Wilf hustled the Doctor into the ward. Sylvia was sat at Donna's bedside, but she looked up and gave them a filthy look as Wilf pulled aside the curtain.

"Him again," she said. "Hasn't he done enough?"

"Now, now, Sylvia," said Wilf. "How's our girl doing?"

"The nurses won't tell me anything apart from we have to wait for the specialist. God, I hate this hospital. It reminds me of Geoff, at the end."

Wilf up pulled a chair to the other side of the bed and sat down heavily. He reached across to Sylvia and squeezed her hand. Donna lay motionless between them, unnaturally still and silent. The Doctor stood awkwardly at the foot of the bed, fiddling with the chart. Suddenly, Donna's eyes flew open. She stared at him.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Hello!" bluffed the Doctor, "I was, ah, just visiting your grandad. He told me you weren't too well. I'm John Smith, by the way. You might remember me from your mother's house." 

The anxiety behind the Doctor’s smile suggested that he knew he wasn’t convincing. Donna took pity on him.

"Oi, less of that, spaceman," she said. "John Smith? I think I know a Time Lord when I see one."

"Donna," gaped the Doctor. "No, no, no, no, no! You can't remember! You're not supposed... you could... are you all right?"

"According to the Ood I am."

"What Ood?"

"I've got the song of Ood Sigma in my head. He sang my song for me so I could hear it properly, instead of it being all mixed up with yours. How weird is that?"

"Donna, love," said Sylvia, "you're not making sense. Let me call the nurse."

"No, don't call the nurse," said Wilf. "The Doctor knows what she's talking about, don't you, Doctor? Is she going to be alright?" 

The Doctor had produced his sonic screwdriver and was scanning Donna. She flapped at the blue light as it hit her eyes and tried to scowl at him, but he was grinning so hard it was infectious.

"You're human," said the Doctor. "Completely, brilliantly human!"

Wilf made way for him at the bedside so that he could hug Donna. Before the Doctor could step away again she hit him.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"You left me! And you took my memory away! You let me go back to that!"

"You were dying, Donna! It was for the best!"

"It wasn't for the best! How do you know what's for the best? Do you have any idea of the nightmares I've been having? You can't just leave people having nightmares about things they don't remember!"

"Donna, I'm so sorry." He looked truly contrite.

"I should think so! Oh, come here, you doughnut," she said, and hugged him again.

Donna was checked out of hospital by a doctor who assumed that there hadn't been anything wrong with her in the first place, and Wilf and Sylvia walked them to the TARDIS. 

"Is that it?" Sylvia asked. "You'll hardly fit."

"It'll be fine, Mum," said Donna. "Are you going to be OK getting home?"

"We'll get a taxi," said Wilf. "What about you, sweetheart? Where are you off to?"

"Oh, that's easy," said Donna. "We're going to find Rose so that we can sort out the mess he made."

"Donna," said the Doctor, his tone carrying a warning to be quiet, "it doesn't need sorting. I left her with him."

"With who?" asked Wilf. He felt that he had missed a lot.

"The other Doctor," said Donna. "The human Doctor. I had a head full of spaceman, or I would have told him it was a bad idea."

"You saw her with him," said the Doctor, curtly.

"Yes. I saw her with someone who looks like you, but isn't you. And you didn't even ask her, did you? You just left. Honestly, are you nine hundred or nineteen? What age do Time Lords mature?"

"But she..."

"Someone who looked just like you told her that he loved her. Which is fine for all of three seconds, but you never gave her time to think. You've got to go back and talk to her."

"There isn't any way to talk to her. The void is sealed."

"But I don't believe that. She talked to me. She talked to me in a world that didn't even exist and she gave me a message for you. She was trying to get back to you for years. She won't have given up."

"She's right," said Wilf. "She was in our living room when you were all talking on your computer network. She said, 'Find me, Doctor' and you can't tell me she didn't mean it. You should have seen her face."

The Doctor could picture Rose's face very clearly, but he said "That was different. That was before."

"Doctor," said Donna. "Just think about it for a minute. As a favour to me. What if we're right? Isn't there any way she could get in touch?"

"No. Not unless…Just suppose that Rose is trying to get through, Donna - and I'm not saying that she is - then she's got to be using the dimension cannon. But the dimension cannon won't work unless it's got something in this universe to work with. Last time it was Davros messing about with the Medusa Cascade, but she'd need something new to home in on this time. Something to pull her in."

"A dimension hoover!"

"Yes! Well, sort of. Have to work on the name. Dimension net, maybe. Like catching a human cannonball."

He realised that he'd been getting too excited and slowed down.

“But if we do this and there’s nothing from her end, then that’s it, OK? If she’s switched the dimension cannon off, then that’s the end.”

"Whatever. Where do we get a dimension net?"

"I can make one. That's not the tricky part. The tricky part is, where do we put it? We have to put it in the same place in this universe as in the parallel one, so it can resonate."

"Well, where would Rose put it?"

He thought about it. "I'm probably going to regret this," he said, "but Donna Noble, I'm going to take you to Torchwood."

"That's Captain Jack, right?"

"Oh, yes!"

"Brilliant!"

***

The Doctor and Rose left the house to have a break from Jackie. They took the dog for a walk down to the river, and sat on a bench watching the zeppelins. The sun was going down, and the water was tinted with reflections of the rose and amber sky.  


"Earth sunsets," said the Doctor. "They're beautiful."

"Mmm," agreed Rose.

"Not as beautiful as Rynon Seven though."

"No." 

"Don't you ever get just a bit bored? Same old sky, same old sunset, same old Earth?"

Rose laughed ruefully. "All the time."

"It's not the same, is it? Without a TARDIS?"

"No, but it's good though."

He looked sideways at her. "Really?"

"No, not really. It drives you mad."

They both considered this.

"So," said the Doctor, "back at the beach, you didn't actually say anything."

"That's rich! It took you two years to answer me." She bit her lip. "Can I ask you something?"

"Anything you like."

"Do you think you're him? I mean, really him? Same person, one less heart?"

The Doctor watched the river in silence for a moment, his expression dark. Finally he said, "A while back, Donna and I landed on this planet. It was in the middle of a war and the first thing they did was take some of my blood and grow themselves a soldier. My daughter. You would have liked her. She was full of life, and she didn't fight their war for them. And she was killed by this old general with nothing but hate in his heart. And I - the Doctor - he had a gun to that man's head, and he didn't shoot. But I would have. She was worth so much more than a bitter old soldier. When I was the Doctor, I gave a whole planet an example. But now I don't think I could do that. I think he deserved to die. I don't know if that's because I was created in a battle, or if it's because I'm human, or if something went wrong during the metacrisis, but I killed the Daleks because I knew it would work. Your Doctor wouldn't have done it. He would never even have killed the general." He smiled a bit hopelessly. "Or finished his sentence at Bad Wolf Bay."

"Yeah, that's what I thought," said Rose, sadly. "He wouldn't have answered that question, either. Not properly."

"I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"For being here. If I wasn't here, you'd be with him. Travelling."

"Yeah, but it was my fault. I should have known he'd get the wrong idea."

"He didn't ask."

"He doesn't. He gets these stupid ideas sometimes, and he doesn't think like a human."

"And you love him."

"Yeah."

"Even with his head full of stupid, alien ideas."

"Even with his head full of _completely_ stupid, alien ideas."

"You could find him."

"The dimension cannon doesn't work."

"Ah, but that was before Torchwood got a scientific adviser."

Rose twisted round and stared at him. The movement felt a bit odd, and she realised that she'd been avoiding looking at him since the beach. He gave her a knowing grin, and it occurred to her that asking the next question would probably make her the most selfish woman alive. She still didn't hesitate.

"You can fix the cannon?"

_"Well,_ that depends. Someone has to help on the other end. But I can make this end work." 

***

"Captain Jack," said the Doctor, stepping out of the TARDIS. "Not such a long time, no see!"

"Doctor," said Jack, "welcome to the Hub! And Donna, good to see you. Or should I call you something else? Is it DoctorDonna?"

"It's just Donna," said Donna. "The Doctor's keeping his hand to himself from now on."

"Ooo, shame. So what are you two doing here? Come to enjoy the Cardiff nightlife? Just say the word. I know the best club, and you wouldn't believe what they do on Fridays."

"Oh my god, are we in Cardiff?" asked Donna. "Why don't you have any windows? Don't tell me health and safety are OK with all this artificial lighting. And your tan can't be real." She paused, catching a hint of something in the air, "And _what_ does this place smell of?"

"Pterodactyl," supplied the Doctor. "Jack, are you keeping a pterodactyl in the 21st century?"

"Yeah, but I can't ask her to leave. I think she likes me. Come up to the meeting room. The guys will want to say hi."

The rest of the team were sat around the table eating Chinese takeaway while Ianto gave Mickey the Torchwood induction presentation. Gwen and Martha were offering helpful hints.

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Mickey was saying. "Don't feed the Weevils."

"Quite right," said the Doctor. "Sorry to interrupt."

The was a moment of cheerful chaos as everyone hugged each other or was introduced to people that they'd only seen on a video screen. Takeaway food was redistributed and more beer was opened. Once everyone was sat down, the Doctor explained that he needed to do some work inside the lever room at Canary Wharf.

"And I thought it might be easier to do it officially, since it'll be hard to build a machine on the top floor without anyone noticing," he said. "And last time I landed the TARDIS in there it didn't go very well. Talk about health and safety, Donna! What about all those people with guns and itchy trigger fingers?"

"And Torchwood staff are trained against psychic devices liked your paper," agreed Captain Jack. "I can get you a pass, but it might be better if you told me what you're planning. Do you need backup?"

"He left Rose in the other universe with the other Doctor," said Donna, around a mouthful of kung pao chicken. "We need to build a net to bring her back, just in case she's got something to say to him."

Martha stared at the Doctor in disbelief and then recovered enough to smack his arm with her chopsticks.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"You spent all the time I was with you mooning over her, and how you lost her, and how Rose would know what to do, and then as soon as you find her you dump her in another universe? Doctor, I'm sorry, but you are such an idiot."

"I left her with him!" protested the Doctor. "He's human!"

"Aw, mate," said Mickey, "if it was just a human she wanted, we'd still be living on the Powell Estate."

The Doctor looked around the table. His friends looked sympathetic, but they clearly agreed with Mickey. He gave up.

***

"Rose Tyler to the lever room. Doctor Smith to the lever room."

Rose was moving before the announcement finished, pelting for the lift. She pressed the button half a dozen times, as if that would make any difference, and muttered the "come on, come on, come on" mantra of lift summoning. It finally arrived with the Doctor already inside and she darted in to join him. 

"This is it, right?" she asked.

"Could be." He grinned. "Only one way to find out."

The lift opened onto the immense space of the lever room. Cartwright and his team were bustling around the dimension cannon, which looked like the sort of huge laser a Bond villain would build. There were workbenches along the walls to the left and right of the entrance, and they were covered with laptops, regular PCs, soldering irons, assorted electronic test equipment, a couple of guns, and a coffee machine. The opposite wall was as blank as it had been when Rose had pounded on it two years ago. The dimension cannon pointed straight at it. 

Cartwright came over to them, carefully avoiding walking in front of the cannon.

"It's been activated," he said, "and we think it's synchronising with something over there."

"Right then, let's do it," said Rose. "While we can."

"Do you need to prepare?"

“No, I think I’m ready for this one, thanks.”

Rose and the Doctor stepped in front of the dimension cannon and turned their backs to it, so that they were facing the blank wall. They looked at each other, and Rose smiled reassuringly at him. His eyes seemed darker than her Doctor's had been, and were much harder to read, but she thought that he looked worried. She took hold of his hand as if it was the proper Doctor she was facing danger with, and his fingers tightened around hers.

"Now!" she said.

The room was filled with the noise of machinery powering up, and the technicians had to raise their voices as they hammered at their keyboards.

"100 per cent charged."

"In sync with world B."

"Homing in on signal."

"We have permeability!"

Cartwright pushed a last button, and the cannon fired a huge ball of white light towards Rose and the Doctor. As it passed them, it caught them up and rocketed on towards the wall. An instant before they hit, there was a boom and the light vanished, taking them with it.

***

Donna watched the Doctor out of the corner of her eye. He was leaning against the wall to one side of the dimension net, which was possibly the most untidy bit of equipment ever built. The Doctor had cobbled it together from equipment he had in the TARDIS, some of Captain Jack's supplies, and the leftover bits of the Canary Wharf levers. It sat on the floor next to the TARDIS in a tangle of wires and lights. The Doctor had worked on it in a burst of frantic activity, but once the lights had come on he had left Captain Jack to monitor it and retired to the wall. His face was expressionless and he was very still.

Martha Jones came in with paper bags full of coffee and muffins. Captain Jack had given her some spiel about brightening Canary Wharf with her presence, but Donna thought he had asked her along in case anyone needed medical attention. It wasn't a happy thought. Donna felt like she had pushed them all out of an aeroplane and they were waiting to see if the parachutes were going to open. She didn’t know what the Doctor would do if it didn’t work.

The net beeped. 

The Doctor straightened up in an instant, but even so he only had time for one step forward before the wall in front of the net became too bright to look at. Two familiar silhouettes appeared at the centre of the light, which flared and then cut out. The other Doctor and Rose stood in front of the wall. 

Donna wiped her watering eyes and breathed again. Rose had dropped the other Doctor's hand, and was striding towards the Time Lord. She thumped him across one shoulder and then hugged him fiercely.

"Ow!" said the Doctor. "Rose, I'm so sorry."

Rose had buried her face in his jacket and wasn't moving. 

"Rose?" asked the Doctor.

Rose lifted her head and stepped back so that she could look up at him. She opened her mouth, but whatever she saw in his face seemed to satisfy her, because she closed it again.

She smiled. 

"Hello," she said. "You can't get away from me."

"No," he said. "People keep hitting me when I try. I'm sorry."

She laughed shakily. "You're lucky I let you get away with this rubbish. Hello, Donna. Did you hit him for me?"

"I would've done, but I had to hit him for myself first. Martha hit him for you. Captain Jack's just waiting his turn."

"Rose, just say the word if you want me to spank him," said Jack, and came and hugged her. "It's good to see you!" he said.

"And you! Jack, how comes you didn't die on the Dalek space station?"

While Rose and Jack caught up, the Doctor wandered over to the human version of himself.

"So," he asked, with careful nonchalance, "what happened?"

"She's not one for half-measures," said the new Doctor, trying to match his offhand tone. "You know that. And you were wrong to just drop me in her lap like a stray puppy. I hope you've got a plan B."

"Simultaneous materialisation."

"Ah! I always thought that sounded nasty."

"Pretty nasty if it goes wrong. Not very nice even if it goes right. I won't do it without your permission."

"It won't work. We're not similar enough. You can't combine a Time Lord and a human."

"What if you're not human?" asked Martha, who had been listening in. Everyone in the room turned to look at her.

"What?!" said the Doctors in chorus.

"What about the chameleon arch? It changed _him_ from a Time Lord to a human last time. So why couldn't it turn _you_ into a Time Lord? Without the whole personality-in-a-watch thing. Keep your personality, just change the body."

"Martha Jones," said the brown-suited Doctor. "That's brilliant! Two Time Lords! Similar enough to recombine."

"Wait a minute," said Donna, "that's gotta work both ways. What if you were both human? Wouldn't that make you similar enough to recombine? One human Doctor."

There was a moment of silence.

"You know," said Jack, "this is going to be a very long day and I don't think we have nearly enough to eat here. Donna, Martha, help me get some sandwiches?"

When they were gone, the Time Lord looked at Rose. "It's up to you," he said. "I could be human."

"You could have made yourself human before?"

"I suppose so. Technically."

"Why didn't you?"

"Well, I wasn't sure it was really me. But it seems to have possibilities." He nodded at the other Doctor. 

"Oh, shut up," said Rose. "You don't want to be human. I don't want you to be human, either. Haven't you got that through your head yet?"

"Rose, if I'm a Time Lord I can't ever be..."

"I don't want you to. I want you to be you."

"What he told you… I can't...."

"Shut up. I don't care. It doesn't matter. Just promise to stop leaving me behind."

"I promise," he said, with utter sincerity, "I really do." He turned to look at the human Doctor.

"Ready to be a Time Lord again?" he asked.

"Oh, I think so," replied the other Doctor. "All those memories of watching humanity don't really prepare you for being one of them. I only have forty years left to live as a human, and that isn't enough time to work out how to do it. It's not long enough to live, and it's far too long to spend on one planet." He looked hungrily at the TARDIS. "I'm a human who remembers being the last of the Time Lords, and if I'm to have a choice, I choose to be a Son of Gallifrey."

"Right!" said Rose's Doctor. Now that things were decided, she could feel the energy in him. "First things first. Let's turn this off for a minute." He fiddled with the dimension net. “There we go. Don't want Torchwood coming through to see how we're getting on. Or worse, Jackie." 

By the time Jack, Donna and Martha returned, the room was empty. Donna could hear the Doctors' voices coming from inside the TARDIS. She peered through the police box door. The chameleon arch was hanging from the TARDIS ceiling, and both Doctors were working on it. Rose was sitting on the battered seat next to the console. She looked over at the door and caught Donna's eye. Donna raised her eyebrows and mouthed "Time Lord?" and Rose nodded. Donna looked unsurprised, and ducked back out to tell Jack and Martha before they made their entrance. 

"That's it!" said the brown-suited Doctor, as his three friends stepped into the TARDIS. The other Doctor nodded, and pulled the arch over his head.

"Is this gonna hurt him?" asked Rose.

"Yes," said Martha.

"No," said the human Doctor. "Well, not as much as last time. No personality replacement. I'll be fine.”

Donna walked over to him and went to take his hand, but the Time Lord stopped her.

"Don't!" he said. "You've got too much in common. He was created from your biological metacrisis, and if you touch him while this is going on the DNA feedback could be disastrous. Best if everyone gets back."

They all backed off. Rose held her Doctor's hand, and Captain Jack put an arm round Donna's shoulder. The Doctor pointed the sonic screwdriver at his doppelganger and activated the arch. It lit up, and the other Doctor yelled in pain. Donna dug her fingers into Jack's coat. The Doctor's screams went on for a long time and when the arch finally switched off he was left gasping. They stared at him in consternation.

"Actually, that _was_ as bad as last time," he panted. "Did it work?"

Everyone looked at Rose's Doctor. He thumbed the settings of the sonic screwdriver and the blue light shone out. 

"Time Lord!" he said. "Completely, brilliantly, Gallifreyan!"

"All right!" whooped Jack.

The Doctors grinned at each other and the new Time Lord whipped the chameleon arch off his head and ruffled his hair.

"Oh, we're just getting started," he said. 

"Simultaneous materialisation," said his twin. "Not something the Council would have approved of, but beggars can't be choosers."

The two Doctors turned to the console and began working on three sides of the hexagon each. From where Donna was standing, there could have been a mirror down the central column. The slight, almost indefinable, differences between the two men had vanished, and it was only their clothes that let her tell them apart. 

"Do you know what they're doing?" she asked Rose.

"You mean apart from simultaneous materialisation? Not a clue. I'd have thought you'd know if you're part Time Lady."

"No, that's all gone now. Thankfully."

"You don't miss it?"

"No. It's taken me a long time to realise it, but I'm actually pretty fantastic. The Doctor taught me that."

"It's easier to be fantastic when you're with him."

"Oh, god, so much easier. You have to be fantastic just to keep up with him."

Rose laughed. "By the way, I meant to say thank you," she said.

"What for?"

"For making him build that dimension net thing. There's no way that was his idea."

"Well, I might've given him a nudge. It was like he needed someone to give him permission. But he wanted to do it, really he did. He missed you so much."

They both watched the Doctors for a moment, and then Donna asked, "Do you think it'll work? You and him?"

"Work? I don't even know what it is. But he's not leaving me behind again."

"Oh, tell me about it. After we left you in Norway he tried to dump me back home with amnesia. I thought I was still living with my mother!"

"Oh my god, that's horrible!"

_"I know!_ My grandad practically had to drag him back to Earth to sort it out."

"I met your grandad! He was fighting a Dalek with a paintball gun! Your grandad is so great!"

"Anyway," interrupted one of the Doctors, "anyone want to see if this works?"

"See if what works?" asked Donna. The TARDIS console didn't look any different. 

"This!" said the Doctor, with a mad smile. He slammed down a lever.

The time rotor started moving with a wheezing, groaning sound, but the TARDIS itself didn't take off. The Doctors dematerialised instead. The TARDIS' engines increased in pitch and the console rattled from side to side. A figure began to appear between the spaces left by the Time Lords. It was the Doctor, but he was glowing as if he was in the middle of regenerating. 

"Too much!" he said, as he became solid and the rotor stopped moving. He gritted his teeth and moved stiffly over to the console, dragged it open, and blew the golden light inside the TARDIS.

"Much better," he said, and collapsed, cracking his chin on the console on the way down. 

Rose and Martha ran towards him, and Martha pulled out her stethoscope and placed it on his chest.

"I'm getting two heartbeats," she said. "I think he's all right, although he probably bit his tongue when he banged his chin. Let's just give him a minute."

"What's happened to his suit?" asked Rose.

The material was strangely thick, and an odd, muddy colour.

"I think it's both suits together," said Donna, peering over her shoulder. "They materialised in the same place and got all mixed up."

"They've mixed themselves into one person?” asked Martha. “That doesn't sound possible.” 

“No,” said Jack. “It sounds dangerous.”

The Doctor lay on the floor and sorted memories like a gambler performing a riffle shuffle with two decks of cards. Recollections of the Dalek Crucible overlapped each other, with alternating points of view.

He was held under Davros' force fields looking at himself in a blue suit and then in a brown suit.

He closed the TARDIS door on himself and Rose at Bad Wolf Bay, and the TARDIS dematerialised and left him behind with Rose. 

He took Donna's memories away while she begged him not to, and killed the Daleks with as little mercy as they had shown the rest of the universe.

Rose kissed him, and he let the light of it keep the darker memories at bay. 

He opened his eyes and saw a circle of worried faces. 

"Ow!" he said. "Who hit me that time?"

"Simultaneous materialisation," Jack said. "You hit yourself. Are you OK?"

The Doctor sat up and rubbed his chin.

"I think that went well, considering," he said.

"Doctor," said Martha, "that was… impossible. You can't have two people in the same space. There'd be an explosion."

"Bit too much mass," said the Doctor. "But E=mc2, as old Albert used to say. Mass is changed to energy, extra energy goes back to the TARDIS. Saves refuelling after towing the Earth halfway across the galaxy. Rose, your wrist is beeping."

Rose tapped the device on her wrist.

"It's Major Cartwright," she said. "He wants me to report in."

The Doctor grinned as one of his new memories surfaced.

"Meet you in your mum's garage, then?" he asked. 

She smiled back in delighted comprehension. "You bet."

"Jack," said the Doctor, "I could use an extra pair of hands with the net, if you don't mind a couple more trips."

"It would be a pleasure."

"Donna?" asked the Doctor. "Still on board?"

"Can't you take a hint, spaceman? You're never getting rid of me." She looked at Rose. "Unless…"

Rose felt a pang of jealousy, but she suppressed it.

"No one gets left behind," she said. "Not you, not me, not versions of him. There's room in the TARDIS."

"I'd love you to come," put in the Doctor, truthfully.

"Right!" said Donna. "I will! Brilliant!"

"Martha?" asked the Doctor. 

"You can drop me off back home," she said. "But I'll be talking to Ianto about getting the subwave working again. And you'd better keep your phone plugged in!"

The Doctor held out his hand to Rose and she helped him to his feet. 

***

Rose received a mixed reception at Torchwood. They were pleased to see that she was safe, but a bit annoyed that she'd left their scientific advisor behind. The Doctor had switched the net off as soon as she was through, which meant that the cannon was no longer working, and Major Cartwright wasn't very happy about that either. It was 8 o'clock before they let her leave the building.

Jackie was waiting for her in the car park to give her a lift home.

"I was giving it 10 more minutes and then I was going in after you," she said. "What have you done with the Doctor?"

"The Doctors put themselves back together," said Rose. "There's just one of him now, in the other universe. I'm going to go with him."

"Oh," said Jackie, not entirely happily.

"Mum, it's better like this. I'll still visit."

"You'd better. I don't want Tony to forget he has a sister."

Rose climbed in the passenger seat and looked out of the window as they pulled into the traffic. Drivers were just starting to switch on their lights in the growing twilight. Now that she was leaving them behind, she looked at the overly-familiar streets with something like sadness. For the past two years her commute to and from work had given her an almost claustrophobic desire to be somewhere else, but Jackie's words had taken away some of her triumph at escaping. She had become a little more attached to her new home than she had realised.

Back at the house, Pete opened the door for them with Tony on one hip. He noticed the Doctor's absence and put his other arm around Jackie.

"So," he said. "Garage?"

"Yeah," said Rose, unwilling to drag things out. 

The cars had been moved out of the garage to make way for the Doctor's work. "See," he had told Rose, "Torchwood has a dimension cannon, good for them. But show me where it says we can't have one, too? Bound to come in handy."

The second cannon was smaller than Torchwood's and somehow more dense, like an iPod compared to a ghetto blaster. Rose turned it on and watched a stream of numbers cross a small screen on its side. She bit her lip. She'd been away from the Doctor for hours, and there was no telling what could happen to him in that time. At least Donna was there to talk some sense into him. 

_This is it,_ she thought. _If he doesn't come through, I'm not chasing after him. Well, I am, but he'd better not make me._

A breeze blew her hair into her eyes and she brushed it out of the way before she remembered that she was in a garage with the doors shut. A wheezing, groaning noise filled the room, and Rose laughed in delight and relief. The electric glare of the dimension cannon turned the TARDIS' materialisation into a lightning storm, and static electricity fought the wind for possession of her hair. There was a final thump and then silence, apart from Tony's horrified wailing.

The door of the TARDIS opened and the Doctor stepped out. 

"Hello," he said. "You took your time turning that thing on. And Jackie and Pete and Tony!" He had to raise his voice over Tony's crying. "Good to see you! Cor, he's got lungs like a Judoon!"

Jackie stared at him. "What happened to the other one of you?" she asked.

"He's here, Jackie," said the Doctor. "I'm him. He's me."

"Oh, right, just like that? You should never have left that poor boy behind in the first place."

"I know," he said. "I remember. And thank you for giving me a home when I needed one."

Jackie hugged him.

"Do you know," mused the Doctor, "you're one of the few people who hasn't tried to hit me recently. Who'd have thought it?"

"Oh, shut up," said Jackie. "I haven't hit you in ages." She took a deep breath. "Right," she said, "I'm not having long goodbyes. We'll turn the cannon on once a day, just in case. And Rose has a brother now, so you two had better visit. I know it's all stars and things where you're going, but this is home too, so don't just swan off and forget us. Promise?"

"I promise," said the Doctor, remembering how it felt to watch the TARDIS dematerialise at Bad Wolf Bay and take the last of Gallifrey away from him. "No one gets forgotten."

Rose hugged her mum and dad and kissed Tony. The Doctor shook Peter's free hand and looked at Tony as if he was a small, screaming alien. "Blimey," he said.

Rose laughed and bundled him into the TARDIS.

"On the other side of the void it's a bus station," said the Doctor, starting the dematerialisation. "Jack and Donna are minding the net for us. Once we've landed we'll pack it inside the TARDIS until we need it."

The room gave a sickening lurch.

"What was that?" demanded Rose.

"Bit bumpy," said the Doctor. "The old girl's not used to crossing the void."

The TARDIS zoomed upwards like an elevator and Rose fell to her knees.

"No, no, no!" shouted the Doctor, and hit a smoking control panel. A kick to the console brought the TARDIS under control and the rotor stopped. Rose scrambled to her feet and headed for the door.

Outside, Jack lay dead across the battered dimension net.

Donna was gone.

***

"Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind. Or forgotten." Lilo and Stitch


End file.
